My brother, an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Minnesota, refuses to worry about anything. Nine bucks in library fines almost kept a high school diploma out of his hands, and he was more than an hour late to a final examination last fall.
So I was surprised to hear in March that he had already landed a summer job. He took it, which meant he had to move out of the house a month ago.
Into a mortuary.
He is a night phone man at a funeral home in Minneapolis, on duty every other night from 5 p.m. until 8 a.m. He simply takes calls and lists the basics–who, when, where, how–on death reports and gives them to the morticians.
Besides his room, which is sharper than any dormitory cubicle I`ve seen, Tim has his own phone line and a kitchen practically to himself. The place throws in $100 a month, too. It`s a helluva setup, with only a couple of catches.
To get to his room, he has to walk past a display of about 20 (empty)
caskets, including a bronze job tagged at about $20,000.
”It`s nice that he has them outside the door,” a close friend of his said. ”He could have as many people as he wants stay over.”
And on the other side of Tim`s wall is what he delicately calls ”the prep room.”
”I can hear them working in there,” Tim told me last week. ”I have flowers in my room because sometimes the smell seeps in.”
(Yeah, I made the mistake of asking where he gets the flowers.)
The higher-ups at the home also like the way he looks, so Tim works an occasional wake, suiting up and looking bereaved.
How Tim looks bereaved, I have no idea. We`re talking about a kid who dressed for a date in an orange plaid coat with an airsick bag in the breast pocket. Who couldn`t understand why 320 students took a logic class in a room with 305 seats. ”I just thought that was ironic,” Tim said in his trademark monotone.
It`s just that dry wit that makes the family think Tim has found the perfect vocation.
”I think it`s great,” Mom said. ”I can have fresh flowers in the house whenever I want.”
But no one`s eating it up as much as Tim. As with everything else, he emphasizes the lighter side of the whole thing.
”I don`t show the outward respect that maybe you should,” he said, laughing. ”I appreciate the fact that (the job) offends some people.”
He also says the work isn`t getting to him, but I wonder. ”Sometimes,”
he acknowledged, ”I`ll look at people and think what they would look like if they were lying in a casket.”
